Banu Amela

The Banu Amela were a southern Arabian tribe who migrated from the central highlands of Yemen to Jordan, Syria, and the southern highlands and eastern valley of Lebanon after the fourth destruction of the Marib Dam in 200 BC. They acted as foederati for the Byzantine Empire against the Arabian tribes and the Lakhmids, and they were said to be superficial followers of Monophysitism after abandoning Semitic paganism sometime after 476 AD. Following the Islamic conquest of the Levant, the tribe, which was fiercely opposed to the Umayyad Caliphate, espoused the Shia movement. From the 11th to 13th centuries, they adopted Twelver Shia thought, and they survived the Crusades, the French conquest during the 1920s, and independence in 1943. The Banu Amela became the largest Shia Muslim group in Lebanon, and they also formed diaspora communities in Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in West Africa, the United States and Canada in North America, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay, and Uruguay in South America, and in Australia.